Hmmm. Thanks for the link. The name George Bush Sr. surfaces in the strangest places.
But, always where the "Robber Barons" lurk.

It's said that a chain in as strong as its weakest link. The human food chain is the one
chain that we should be strenghtening, one
would think.

But then again, "Greed" is probably the weakest link in the human psyche.

This, from the article, really disturbs me. I anticipate the same situation that exists with herring. As prices and these exports of the fish increase, the home consumer will be neglected.

It is years since I've seen a fresh herring in a supermarket - or in my local fish store for that matter.

We have a ridiculous situation where a radio station appears to have a monopoly on the sale of fresh herring to the Canadian public. Invariably this sale occurs bi-annually in New Westminster.

The price is right but, in the lining-up waiting to fill your bucket, you may expire from hypothermia, as I almost did on one occasion.

I would like to hear from a commercial fisher the rationale behind this selling method.

As I recall, Skep, after WW2, the large overseas food sardine market (primarily Japan) we had prior to the War disappeared.

The industry then became entirely a "reduction fishery" in which the fish became fertiliser or mink food. The herring were grossly overharvested and the fishery collapsed.

Today the fish are harvested for the roe, with the carcass becoming food for fish farms.

Stocks are managed just above the numbers required for a bit of comfort, reproduction and a small harvest.

There is a bait herring fishery in the Gulf of Georgia, so perhaps you could buy some fish bait to eat!!!!

The Haida have banned a kill fishery for herring in the waters around the Charlottes, and instead focus upon roe-on-kelp, (Ghow or K'aaw), the only logical way to sustainably harvest herring.

S/B ...food herring market...

Finally got to the link mentioned in scylla's first posting.

A wonderfully written article and an easy read with the large print.

excerpt:

Not one of these fish is destined for a supermarket, canning factory, or restaurant. Menhaden are oily and foul and packed with tiny bones. No one eats them. Yet they are the most important fish caught along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, exceeding the tonnage of all other species combined.

I wonder if this fish goes under another name.
I'd like to take the challenge and, just as I do with smelt, pan-fry a few and slap them between two slices of toast with a little mustard - yummee!

Seriously, it's a global problem with a domino effect potentially damaging many species and calling for a cooperative, world body to apply solutions.

The alternative is to stand by as an industry driven by greed and ignorance, and that seems bent on suicide, reaches that point of no return.

Okay, perhaps my question re: these fish going under a different name was silly, but the threatened menhaden were not mentioned in the introductory article and I was thrown by the "oily and foul" in the quote from the link.

I believe that for marketing purposes fish are occasionally renamed. Perhaps what the English call the sprat, turbot, whiting, or plaice are named differently in Canada.

I'm not sure of its veracity but believe the story to be true: that even though a ban was put on dogfish sale for local consumption because of high mercury content, the fish were still being exported to Europe where it would be sold under a different name.

Skep, Simce I had lost the site address for the Discover article, I Googled Menhaden, and was surprised to find how many sites there are now extolling the culinary delights to be found in the lowly Menhaden.

My guess is there is a similarity there to our new-found appreciation for Pink salmon, for I'm old enough to remember when local people would never, ever, admit to actually eating such a "junk fish".

Just another example of scarcity pushing humans ever lower down the food chain, eh? I expect that soon we'll be told of the delights found in eating "Mud shark" (Dogfish), and DFO will begin "managing" that one for us too.
f FD

Skep,

I'm unaware of the mercury-in-Dogfish issue. Perhaps that's why we hear so little about that fishery these days. As far as I know, that issue mercury hasn't hurt the Tuna fishery.

But my contrarian-oriented thinking insists on crying "foul" here, prompted by your pushing me to research Pasteurisation, etc, re our byplay discussion about milk on the Cycling thread.

So, of course, I then find some very disturbing info re these processes, which I am inclined to believe at least in part, echoing your cautioning re "marketing purposes". Among such marketers are enviros who have massaged the businessman's "bottom line" dictum to now read "the end justifies the means" (lying to the public is OK if it's for their own good).

I pity the bureaucrat charged with regulating who is torn between business-oriented info and equally contrived info from enviros - both of which are not above seeking and thus adding "spin".

And what about any respect for the public?? In my little town, where the tap water is already as naturally pure as can be had, people are paying for bottled water at a price above that of gasoline, because it isn't chlorinated. And despite all the possible side effects of doing so, not a word from our health-conscious enviros.

"doing so" in the last line meant chlorinating, and I should have quibbled...where not necessary.

Note that the forage fish as mentioned are Sardines-the term 'pilchard' is incorrect but widely used in BC.

Not for a number of years now-few Salmon sportsfishermen use live bait any longer.

Following your lead, scylla, I Googled: fish sprat It took me to a colorful and informative, Norwegian species guide.

More and more it seems that sardine is a generic term covering several species. I must say, the sprat is a handsome little fish.

excerpt;

Use
Sprat is an important raw material for the canning industry, where it is marketed as sardines and anchovies. Sprat is also an important industrial fish. Fresh sprat is delicious fried or grilled.

Nutritional value:
Sprat is an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D. It also has a high content of vitamin B12. Eating a small amount of sprat as a garnish or on bread (25 g) provides a valuable dietary contribution.

ps

Those "banned" dogfish were reportedly turned into smoked treats in Germany and were sold under a different name in British fish and chip shops. In the latter, hake is also popular - for a long time considered a junk fish by local commercial fishers.

And the Atlantic Turbot is marketed as Greenland Halibut.

And turning to dry land, HR MacMillan got his business start by marketing previously unsaleable Hemlock lumber in Europe as "Northern Fir".

Whoops - we've gone a long way from Humpback whales and Pacific sardines.

I find it utterly amazing, given all the experience we've had with fishermen's greed and DFO's overreadiness to assuage it, our astute(?) politicians have allowed them to attack these new stocks - which many years back were enormous - before they know how large the stocks could grow to; how large the stock biomass has to be in, to be able to protect its niche; or what impacts the Pacific sardine has on the trophic levels above and below it.

Here we have the recovery of a stock we nearly extirpated, and these greedy turkeys just can't stand seeing all that free money going to "waste".

In my opinion, the greediest logger is a pussycat compared to the commercial fisherman.

The ominous side to all this is that the present abundance of Sardines is widely thought to be caused by warmer water.
A few years back there was a huge Sardine 'die off' near Port Hardy which FOC attributed to colder water coming in from the N. Pacific.
Some NCVI beaches were covered with windrows of dead Sardines.

Sam, the Japanese Current has wandered on and off the Northeast Pacific (our) Coast for untold time.

Examples of this are the Turtles, Sunfish, White sharks, etc, which come in with fingers from this warm-water current, which get cut off, then cool, causing the cold-intolerant creatures to die.

Nobody knows for sure if the present phenomenon is just a larger one of those events, or whether it is a symptom of Global Warming.

Which sent me off Googling again, and coming up with this very interesting article, written before today's return of the "pilchard". http://www.portaec.net/library/ocean/disappearance_and_return_of_the.html

A quibble and an observation re the article though. As far as I know, the Portuguese Man o War is a rare if ever, visitor to our shores. More likely the jellies were Vellela, a much smaller look-alike.

Which prompts an amusing story told to me by a native elder many years ago. Though not at all dangerous, Vellela does have "stingers". The men of his village would gather them when they washed up in large numbers`on the beach. Then when a dance happened, the dried and powdered jellies were sprinkled on the floor, and during the dance the dust would waft up the ladies skirts. He's long gone now, but I can still hear his laughter.

On a more serious note, as the Discover article noted, jellyfish are direct competitors with forage fish and their presence in large numbers can indicate something's wrong at that trophic level. That occurrence is prompting concern in what became a "goldrush fishery" in the Bering Sea.

Another sidebar to that story is that I read in the Hational Fisherman some years back that a West Coast fisherman had discovered a small run of Pacific sardine in the Nitinaht Triangle, Whereupon DFO immediately granted him a quota on the grounds that the run was an anomaly, probably overflow from the recovering Californian fishery.

If anyone wonders why I hold such a distaste for DFO, it's because it is money and politics that fuels that evil organisation, not Science.

I'm sure you have us all on tenterhooks, scylla.

To what effect? Cayenne pepper-like? Aphrodisiac? Perhaps a little of both. That would be interesting.

I'm assuming that the jellyfish were gathered for other reasons - food for instance.

I believe N. Americans tend to be quite elitist in their fish eating. And this has undoubtedly hurt the industry by too much concentration on particular species.

I notice in the Asian markets much larger variety of seafoods including what-appear-to-be sun-dried minnow-like fish, shrimp and seaweeds.

whale watching = eco friendly, I don't think so.

I have seen more whale watching boats out on the pacific coast than I have seen whales. And as far as expanding any fishery at this point along the coast is totally uncalled for. Why not try and restore some of the habitat that has been lost to coperate greed and ignorant governments.

stinky salmon,

I, too, question the whole whale watching thing and prefer that they be viewed from a TV or large screen.

I don't doubt that some of these tour operators feel they have to squeeze something (anything) in between visiting casinos, so that they don't appear just as shills for the gambling industry.

I can't believe boats in constant proximity to the whales - especially those with calves - is any benefit to the animals - and is probably harmful.

Yeah, skep, I saw that as soon as it was posted, composed a clarification, then changed my mind as it might be seen as condescending.

The dust created an itch, the remedy for which you can easily guess :-]

I doubt very much the dust created any harm, or that the ladies were totally unaware - or unforgiving - of the joke being played on them.

As far as I know, there is insufficient food value in jellyfish to warrant collecting them, even in desperate times. I read once of the Japanese making a sprciality item out of one particular species.

We've seen pictures of poor Asian fishermen casting mist nets in shallow water for very small fishes. At first I was shocked because I knew many large fish begin life as "minnows" in intertidal waters. "How Stupid" I thought, and then realised if they didn't do so, they and their families would starve.

And so, I can relate to the readiness with which many immigrant Asians fish for undersized local stocks. It's hard to chuck an ethic you've held most of your life. Caucasian hunters, loggers, etc, are facing similar "culture shock" as the hard realities begin to pile up before their unseeing eyes.

Similarly, many Canadian Aboriginals hide behind the excuse that "it is all the white man's fault" and therefore the reality and the rules it creates should not apply to them.

In Dark Ages Ahead, Jane Jacobs writes: "in the end, even the memory of what is lost, is lost".

Skep and Sam, while I can easily relate to your observations re the potential effects upon the whales from the whale-watching "industry", I take this somewhat hard-hearted position, akin to the way I feel about zoos.

We are indeed "users" of natural resources (horrible term). Pointing out that inescapable fact, the industrial "wise users" see such activities as "Disney-izing" wildlife, while the purists evoke quasi-spiritual reasoning to prove we should not be using them at all.

In my mind, Disney-izing is a first step in creating a humane ethic re our treatment of animals, especially among those cement-bound new generations who are unlikely to see a wild animal unless it's in a documentary or in a fleeting glimpse from a car window.

Those who are really concerned for animal welfare (and the effect present attitudes have on our own collective psyche) should first address factory-farming, a form of disgusting brutality few of us want to comprehend.

In my experience, wild animals quickly adjust to the presebce of humans, once they percieve there there is no threat intended. Thus, if the watchers are taught they must resist the temptation to invade the animal's "space", a huge lesson is imparted.

The way is then paved to raising public awareness re addressing a formidable problem - the accelerating degradation of the Continental near and offshore waters from agricultural, industrial, and urban waste.

There's no easy answers to our cooexistence with wild animals though. What do we do with the rapidly-growing flocks of geese which adjust to urban living, destroying farmer's crops, pillaging zoo gardens and making golf courses unplayable? Or the coyote in Vancouver intent upon gobbling up poochies and pussycats?

Sam salmon, you might find this link of interest:
< http://www.campbellrivermirror.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=6&cat=46&id=496897&more=
Foreign invader: Humboldt squid are showing up in the waters off B.C.'s coast. The voracious species is washing up on coast beaches. Why they're dying is unknown but because they're a warmer-water species, it is suspected that cooler temperatures are disorienting them.
....Gudmundseth's catch was a baby juvenile jumbo squid - 20 kilograms and measuring about 1.5 metres long.

On the matter of the golf courses, I'm on the side of the defecating geese. Golfers should consider it just another hazard to play around or through. With all those birds killed or made barren with the weeding and feeding those geese, unable to raise a middle digit, are giving a message the best way they know how.

On the matter of squid, they at least are edible - though it's probably not a good idea to use those dead on the beach for food.
Some may also have qualms about eating a "highly intelligent" animal. It must be that intelligence that enables them to catch the salmon given the salmon's - I would think - superior speed. Perhaps the squid are going after sick stragglers.

On rare occasion I've bought small squid at my local supermarket and quite enjoyed them. At a local Asian food court breaded squid may be had. They appear to be the tentacles from larger squid. I've tried them a couple of times and found them quite palatable but a little bland and rubbery - possibly under-cooked.

Like Octopus, Squid should visit the meat grinder about twenty times and then be fed to the blender. By then, it may be fit for soup.

I'll have the defecating goose, please - dark meat.

Note that I take no position on the Whale Watching industry.
As to the Humboldt Squid that's something I know well having caught them from Ecuador north to Vancouver Island.
My info comes not from the net but from first hand experience-quite unlike the pompous old bores that regularly pontificate here.

Yer pretty thin-skinned to be on a Tyee site, Sam, but FYI, I meant no offense, guaging you to be an intelligent person.

I didn't know you were a fisherman, my squid site was just a reference to observations you made re ocean warming.

Yes, Skep made the refence to possible harm to the whales, and not you, I erred in including you in that observation. I was careless, Sorry.

Perhaps what's really upset you was my reference to fishermen. Speaking in such generalities is unwise at best. Again, I apologise.

When my info comes from the net, I generally match it against my own as well as trusted other sources. And incidentally, I've had my own (unsuccessful) try at commercial fishing.

Finally, I've had no quarrel with you or your views, and although I can do little about my pomposity, if I'm wrong, I appreciate being corrected since nothing destroys credibility faster than hold on to obviously wrong ideas.

Sorry I took so long saying that, can't help myself :-)

Squid Cooking tips.
** It can be both nutritious and delicious **
best if cooked either under one minute or over one hour, anything in between renders them hard and rubbery. YUCK

Does anyone know if Northern Right Whales eat pilchards? They are the most endangered cetacean, only sighted 12 or 13 times since the ban on whaling.

“Everyone agrees it’s a desperate situation, but the tendency is to complain rather than bite the bullet and do something substantive about it. The sea is a commons, and everyone is looking out for their own self-interest. In the simplest terms, the fight is over who will catch the last fish rather than husbanding and restoring the fisheries.”

---Paul Dayton, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Check out: http://www.envirofront.org/Other_Resources/Issue_Ref_Library/Nat_Res_IS/Marine_Fisheries.html